Yet another piece of hardware becomes junk
Amazon Halo is dead, and it's a bigger deal than you think:
Does paying a subscription fee to own and use a piece of hardware feel reassuring? Does that monthly commitment make you feel safe, as the company has income past any original purchase, encouraging it to support and update the product so it never becomes useless?
As Amazon's decision to end support for its Halo line of health products proves, it absolutely shouldn't. What it should do, however, is make you seriously consider whether any subscription-based health and fitness product is a good idea at all.
On April 26, Amazon discontinued its Halo product line, which consists of the Halo Band, Halo View, and the Halo Rise. The app will stop working on August 1, when the hardware will also cease to provide any functionality. It's not good for owners and also bad news for staff at Amazon working on the projects, as many will lose their jobs.
[...] Halo is now a failure, and regardless of why it has happened, it's one that the subscription model couldn't help save. The Halo products weren't the best of their type you could get, but Amazon's massive reach, brand recognition, and willingness of its core customers to pay a subscription for its services should have helped mitigate at least some of that issue. But Amazon isn't going to discontinue successful product lines that make it money — it's going to get rid of the ones that do the opposite. The subscription fee absolutely wasn't a lifeline for Halo and provided no protection to you as a consumer at all.
Amazon's Halo isn't the only subscription-based health and fitness product out there, but it is one of the few that has entirely closed down its operations. When a company with Amazon's resources is forced to do that, it doesn't bode well for other, far smaller companies with similar products. At the very least, Halo's destruction should be a warning to anyone thinking about buying a Whoop fitness band, the Oura Ring smart ring, or even a Fitbit.
[...] Subscription packages of all types aren't exactly getting the best press at the moment; just look at what's happening at Twitter for evidence, and the end of Halo isn't going to help. The death of Amazon Halo should be another warning sign we should be extremely wary about paying a subscription for a health and fitness tracker. Because, unfortunately, we've no idea what the future holds.
What are the non-subscription options out there?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05, @02:26AM (2 children)
Pen and paper
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 05, @05:17AM
Garmin doesn't suck.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Friday May 05, @12:11PM
Well, we are talking about fitness, so how about regularly going to the park and taking a walk while not eating so many pop-tarts, then you won't need to obsessively keep track of every little "workout".
At first I thought TFA was about one of those pieces of exercise equipment that have 1984-ish big brother-ish built in telescreens. But it isn't even that, it is just one of those useless dumb "smart" watches that everyone was trying to push because Apple was doing it.
Of course, like so much modern shit, you don't own it, you rent it. You would think that a bricking a product when support ends like this would wake people up to this problem, but instead every consumertard out there will just throw this thing away and buy a new one, with all the same flaws.
The only reason I wear a watch is to tell time. And I don't need a fucking subscription for that. Oh, shame on me, I must be, like, "old" and stuff.
But we live in an world where people actually RENT word processor software. It is insanity all the way down.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gaaark on Friday May 05, @02:32AM
Neither are their Firestick media things: bought one, didn't like it, so bought a Roku. Roku's are sooo much better and works well with Plex.
The Firestick will change settings in order to put their advertisements and programs in your face: they make it harder to get to the Plex media.
The Roku lets you set things up and then leaves it alone, even after updates. Sooo much better.
Don't buy a Firestick.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday May 05, @06:18PM (1 child)
Could be going in the same direction?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/ [arstechnica.com]
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Friday May 05, @11:28PM
We can only hope so. Nothing of value will be lost, and much value will be recovered.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Friday May 05, @11:32PM (1 child)
At first I thought Amazon bought a video game from Microsoft, then killed it with incompetence. It fits within Amazon's branding. Then I found out it was a fitness product I had never heard of, and shrugged.
I doubt anyone is overly concerned, and I have exactly zero thoughts that anyone using rented services will learn one bit of a tiniest fraction of a lesson.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday May 06, @06:34PM
Like the damned Ring doorbell? They don't tell you you need a subscription until you have the damned thing installed. Looking to replace it with something that doesn't use the internet at all except for software updates. I have plenty of space and have no need to rent space, even though Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and everybody else wants me to rent their servers.
Evil greedy bastards...
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience